


A Delicate Edit

by TheSaddleman



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Foreshadowing, Hugging, Humour, Memory, Memory Loss, Romance, Time Travel, a bit of angst, changing the future, post-Series 9, remembering, spoilers for The Husbands of River Song, spoilers for multiple episodes, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-28 20:34:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13911711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSaddleman/pseuds/TheSaddleman
Summary: Clara has been looking forward to the Doctor swooping her off her feet for another adventure. But why doesn't he recognize her? And who is this Nardole person he's travelling with?





	A Delicate Edit

**Author's Note:**

> For the Doctor, this story is set between "The Return of Doctor Mysterio" and "The Pilot".

“Morning, Doctor!” Clara Oswald called out in a sing-song voice as she swung open the door to the TARDIS and sauntered into the console room. Her dark hair curled against her shoulders under a red-wool beanie cap that rested at a jaunty angle. She took the hat off and tossed it, James Bond-style, in the general direction of the hat rack on the opposite side of the console. Unlike 007, her aim was not true and the cap ended up wrapped around a handrail instead, but she just shrugged and took off her bag and dropped it to the floor, equally carelessly, not noticing/caring as a notebook slipped out. “This week just wouldn’t end. I’ve never been so glad to hear that wonderful noi…”

She stopped cold as she realized the Doctor was glaring at her, his silver eyebrows furrowed.

“What’s wrong, Doctor?” She reached up to check her head. “Have I got hat hair?”

The Doctor approached her cautiously. 

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

She laughed. “You already did that joke with me, remember? That time I showed you Evie Hubbard’s selfie. Your material is getting stale, Doctor and it isn’t improved by getting sweary.”

“You didn’t answer my question, young lady. Who are you, why are you in my TARDIS and how did you get in here?” The Doctor looked up at the ceiling and addressed the TARDIS herself. “That door is supposed to be locked at all times. Don’t you remember what happened with Dodo?” 

“Why are you talking to the TARDIS?” Clara sighed. “Oh, Doctor, please tell me you didn’t do it again. I told you before about fiddling with the TARDIS’ telepathic circuits.”

“Do what again?”

“You zapped your memories of me once when you went tinkering with the circuits. That was back when you wore the bow tie. Instead of enjoying a relaxing day at the beach, we spent hours poring through your diaries until all your memories popped back. Sadly, that included your fez fetish, but sometimes life gives you lemons.”

“You read my diary?” The Doctor asked, seemingly more concerned about that tidbit than the memory-loss part.

“All in the line of duty, Doctor.”

He arched his eyebrows. “ _All_ of my diary?” 

“Why, did you hide naughty secrets in there like Queen Victoria?” She leaned in conspiratorially. “Between you and me, I’m pretty sure she wrote in code to keep some of the best stuff hidden away. That’s what I would have done, anyway, and, well, she’s one of me, right?”

“Never mind my diary. Who are you? I keep asking and you keep not answering me.”

Clara gave him her Year Seven sigh again. “Clara Oswald. Schoolteacher. Species: pudding brain. I’ve been your carer since I was twenty-four and you claimed you were in your eleventh body, which turned out to be your twelfth body because of Captain Grumpy who you disowned, but was _actually_ your thirteenth body because one of your earlier selves gamed the system. We’ve literally been to hell and back, I have no idea how old I actually am now, you still owe me a dinner with Frank Sinatra, looks like you need a haircut again, and I really want to get to the bottom of why suddenly you don’t remember me so I can help you fix it.”

The Doctor angled his face so that he could look into the petite woman’s dark eyes. If there ever was a time Clara felt someone was looking into her soul, this was it. “I think you’re telling the truth.”

“Of course I’m telling the truth, Doctor! OK, I admit that I’m one of the best liars you’ll ever meet, but I’m not lying now.”

“Unless you’re lying about not lying, of course.”

“Oh, come on!”

“I need to get Nardole. He’ll know what to do.”

“Who-dole?” Clara asked.

The Doctor pressed an intercom button. “Nardole, come here quick, I need you,” he spoke.

A bemused, London-accented voice replied back. “I’m busy. Taking care of our guest, remember? The one we really should be finding a permanent hiding place for rather than bouncing around time and space, faffing about with wannabe superheroes. Plus, my trousers need pressing.”

“Drop your trousers and get up here, Nardole. We have a situation.”

“Alright, suit yourself,” Nardole replied.

Clara tried to stifle a laugh. 

“What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing. Should I be prepared to avert my eyes when Nardole arrives?”

“If my suspicions are correct, Clark, there’s nothing funny about this at all,” the Doctor said, suddenly unable to make eye contact with her.

“It’s _Clara_. Doctor, I know something’s gone wrong here. But I promise you, I’ll help you fix it. It’s what we do.”

“Big promise for a human.”

“Have you met me?”

The Doctor looked down at the console. “That’s the problem. I can honestly say I haven’t the foggiest idea.”

A few moments later, a short, bald man with spectacles—and, to Clara’s relief, still wearing trousers—shuffled into the console room. Clara was immediately reminded of a character from _Alice in Wonderland_ , but she couldn’t decide which one: Tweedle Dum or Tweedle Dee. All she knew was she felt an instinctual dislike for him.

“Who the hell are you?” Nardole began immediately. “What are you doing in my TARDIS?”

Clara bristled at that. “ _Your_ TARDIS? How dare you…” She started to approach the man, forcing the Doctor to jump in between them as he noticed the young woman’s fists were suddenly clenched tight.

“OK,” the Time Lord said, “that’s sorted. Clara, you are most definitely a companion.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Nardole demanded.

“Put two companions together who’ve never met and, by my past experience, they usually end up at each other’s throats. Or they end up snogging.”

“Not my type,” Clara and Nardole mumbled in unison.

“Nardole,” the Doctor began, “this is Clara Oswin…”

“Os- _wald_ …”

“Sorry, Oswald. Clara, meet Nardole, my … valet. Play nice, Nardole.”

Reluctantly, Nardole stuck out his hand, but he refused to open his fist for the handshake, forcing Clara to give him an awkward fist bump, instead.

“Valet?” Clara smirked. “Did you win the lottery while I was away, Doctor?”

“No, he was … given to me.”

“What, he’s a slave or something?”

Nardole clapped his hands, “At last! Thank you!” To the Doctor: “See? Even a complete stranger sees it.”

Clara got the sense of stoking the fire of an ongoing argument. She tried to stay out of it, focusing her attention on a tiny, bizarre, wild-haired figurine balanced on the console that she’d never noticed before.

The Doctor set his eyebrows to Defcon 5 as he leaned into Nardole. “For the last time, you are _not a slave_ ,” he growled. “You were bequeathed to me. And you are welcome to leave at any time. Preferably while we are still in the Vortex.”

“You know I can’t leave. I have obligations and now, thanks to your sentimentality, we _both_ have a major obligation. We don’t have time to deal with-”

Suddenly a loud squeal came from Clara’s direction. She jumped back from where she’d given Mr. Huffle an exploratory squeeze, remembering in a flood why Coal Hill administration banned students from bringing screaming rubber chickens to class.

“Uh, who bequeathed you?” Clara asked Nardole, trying to distract them away from her noisy faux pas.

“His wife,” he replied. Clara got the impression that, if Nardole had been holding a microphone in his hand, he’d have dropped it to the floor after saying that, probably adding a cheeky “ _Boom!_ ” as he did so.

“Nardole, I need you to scan Clara. I need to know her temporal placement. Quickly, please.”

“You called me all the way up here to do that? Did you sit on your sonic or something? Why not you?”

“I have my reasons. Scan her, please.” 

Nardole took a small device out of his pocket and aimed it at Clara. She calmly looked at the Doctor as he quickly ran it over her body, from crown to toe. The Doctor looked … unsettled.

“Well?” The Doctor asked.

“Well?” Clara echoed.

“Miss Clara’s temporal placement is about … er … well, we’ll just say she’s from your past, sir.” Nardole’s face revealed that he understood now why the Doctor couldn’t scan her himself. “She isn’t from your personal future.” 

“Well, thank god for that.” The Doctor sighed with relief.

“Doctor, I just told you I’ve known you since before your last regeneration. Mine was the first face that face ever saw,” Clara said, pointing at him. “Please, I need to know what’s going on.” She actually knew what the answer was going to be, but she got the sense that the Doctor needed to explain something to relax himself further, so she gave him the opening, like she often did.

“If you were a companion from my personal future that would be bad, very bad. Hole-in-the-space-time-continuum-the-size-of-Burkina Faso bad. Meeting you prematurely might have resulted in me not meeting you at all down the line. The fact you said you met my earlier self doesn’t mean much. I had a companion named Charley who travelled with my eighth self _before_ spending time with my sixth self, and if you don’t think that wasn’t confusing. If I wasn’t careful with you, I might have found myself inside a Bootstrap Paradox. You see, the Bootstrap Paradox is…”

“I know what that is, Doctor. You explained it to me.”

“Did I?”

“Do you remember a place called The Drum?”

The Doctor frowned. “The Fisher King. Scotland. Lots of water. A moron in a white shirt. Something about a clockwork squirrel. Nasty business. Had no choice but to sacrifice one of the crew in order to, OK, trigger the Bootstrap.”

“Who were you travelling with?”

“I was by myself,” he said automatically. Clara’s heart sank at that. Then, a bit of relief as the Doctor suddenly looked a bit doubtful. “I think I was by myself. Some bits of it are a bit fuzzy. But then I did put myself into cryo for more than a century; some memory loss affecting either side of a big sleep is inevitable.”

“You _weren’t_ alone, Doctor. You were with me. Don’t you even remember what I said to you when you were convinced you were going to die back in the 1980s? How I demanded that you come back to me?”

“I remember Lunn getting slightly inappropriate and emotional in his wording, given the circumstances and the fact I knew he had a thing for Cass.”

“Really? Did he happen to say, ‘If you love me in any way, you’ll come back?’” 

“Uh, shall I go back to the pressing, sir?” Nardole asked.

“Stay put, Nardole,” the Doctor said. “Yes, Clara, that’s exactly what Lunn said. I was worried his significant other-who-didn’t-realize-she-was-his-significant other, Cass, would get jealous.”

“He didn’t say it, Doctor, _I_ said it.”

“Then that was being rather inappropriate yourself then, young lady.”

“No, Doctor, you don’t understand. You, me, the two of us …” Clara looked at Nardole and realized she didn’t want to say any more in front of a stranger. “We went through a lot together, you and I. ‘Same old, same old, just the Doctor and Clara Oswald in the TARDIS,’ you said once. I was more than your ‘carer’ and you were more than just the Doctor to me, alright?”

The Doctor’s lack of comprehension was starting to piss her off a little.

“And that brings me back to _my_ unanswered question,” Clara continued. “Exactly why don’t you remember me? How long ago did it happen? And, if you don’t remember me, why did the TARDIS still come for our usual rendezvous?”

“Rendezvous?” the Doctor asked.

Clara motioned towards the door. The Doctor suddenly couldn’t bring himself to move his feet. “Nardole… you go look,” he said instead.

Nardole did as he was requested (Clara thought she could hear him mumble “slave driver” as he meandered towards the exit), threw the door open, took a quick peek outside, and then clicked the entrance shut. “Snog shack,” he reported back, pointing a thumb in its general direction.

Clara’s jaw dropped. “It is _not_ a snog shack! It’s a storage cupboard in the middle of Coal Hill School—see, on the floor over there, bag full of marking—and, besides, we know better than to … uh … er…” The looks Nardole and the Doctor gave Clara made the rest of that sentence self-destruct in her brain. “Never mind. So I’m from your past, Doctor. OK, I get that. But … what happened to me that you don’t remember me? I didn’t think I was that easy to forget.”

“No, I quite imagine you aren’t,” the Doctor said with a smile before literally tossing his hand in front of his mouth. “Did I say that? Sorry … I need to have a think. Nardole, entertain Clara for a few minutes.”

“Oops, sorry Doctor, I left my karaoke machine back on Mandorax Dellora, along with the rest of my body.” Nardole noticed Clara’s quizzical look. “Long story.”

The Doctor scowled. “Remind me why I pay you?”

Nardole frowned. “You _don’t_ pay me. A situation that I hope to change one of these days, especially given our added ‘responsibilities.’” Yup, he did air quotes. Neither man saw Clara roll her eyes.

The Doctor ignored Nardole, air quotes and all, and wandered downstairs to his workshop, leaving Clara and Nardole alone.

Clara finally laughed. “Being with the Doctor is a volunteer position. Looks good on the resume. Free travel. But you do find yourself covering the cheque occasionally. You get used to the other stuff.”

“I doubt it,” Nardole grumped.

“So, which one?” Clara asked, suddenly.

“What do you mean, which one?” 

“Which wife bequeathed you to take care of him?”

“River Song. Have I got something in my teeth?”

That last bit was because Clara was staring at Nardole, hard.

“No, wait, hang on,” she said. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Nardole looked affronted. “Why doesn’t it make sense?”

“Because River Song is dead.”

“Nothing gets by you. I guess the word bequeathed wasn’t a big enough clue? Shall I use smaller words?”

“No, I mean, I know she died years before I met the Doctor. I even met her data ghost thing. We worked together to save the Doctor on Trenzalore. He told me that this was after he’d seen her off to some planet called Darryl to resolve her own timeline, or something.”

“It was _Darillium_. And … well, it’s a long story.” Nardole’s eyes narrowed for a moment. And then it was time for his jaw to drop slightly as he looked at Clara with sudden clarity. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

Clara ignored this and pushed on with, “And why does he need an actual carer, anyway? I was only joking about being his carer—I was, I _am_ —his companion. But you seem to be the real deal. He seems … weaker. Not as strong. Like he’s missing something. What did you do to him?”

“It wasn’t what I did to him. If you really want to know … actually, no, no, I’d better not tell you.”

“Why not?” She pointed a well-nibbled fingernail at Nardole. “And if you say ‘wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey,’ I promise to go Malcolm Tucker on you.”

“I have no idea what that means. Miss Clara, if you’ve been with the Doctor as long as you claim, and if you’re who I think you are, you should understand why I can’t tell you.”

“But the Doctor is in pain.” She looked towards the stairs where the Doctor had descended. “I know he’s in pain. I don’t care about the First Law of Time. He’s … everything to me and I need to know what’s going on.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” Nardole said.

Clara swiped a hand, dismissively. “Oh, to hell with this.”

The Doctor returned to the console and, before Nardole could stop her, Clara was all but inside the Time Lord’s personal space; she was beyond angry now.

“You mean to tell me you really don’t remember Trenzalore? The Orient Express? Missy? The two-year-long New Year party? Us?”

The Doctor looked defensive. “I remember Trenzalore. Both times. I remember seeing River’s data ghost. Vastra, Jenny and Strax. That bampot in the top hat. I remember Tasha Lem and the Daleks the second time, nine hundred years of looking after a town full of pudding brains. I remember there was a mummy on the Orient Express. And the less said about Missy, the better. But, I’m sorry, I don’t remember you in any of that.”

Clara turned away from the Doctor.

“Doctor, I know what’s happened,” Nardole said quietly, but no one paid attention to him.

Clara turned back to the Doctor. “Not good enough.”

“I know, Clara, and we probably should try to fix it. Do you think we should try to fix it?”

“Since when were you this indecisive?”

“Since you died and he erased all of his memories of you.”

That was Nardole. 

Clara looked at the small humanoid in shock. “I don’t believe you.”

The Doctor glared at Nardole. “What?”

Nardole looked at the woman with regret. “Doctor, this is Clara. _The_ Clara. The one you told River about. The one you were in … well, the one you lost. You said you erased your memories of her because you couldn’t handle it.”

“Is this true, Doctor?”

“Well, how the hell should I know? Memory erased, remember?” Now it was the Doctor who was starting to get angry. He started to pace the console room, chewing on his index fingernail. Clara knew the gesture well—they shared the habit—but right now it was being done by a man who looked like her Doctor, the man she’d given her heart to, but at the same time it was like she was viewing a completely different individual. It was as if he’d regenerated, but kept the same body.

Clara turned slowly to Nardole. “Why did you tell me this? Isn’t that Time Travel Rule Number One? You might as well tell me how I die, too.”

“I don’t know,” he replied.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Clara asked.

“All I know is that after … it happened, the Doctor spent many years trying to get you back—he refused to say how long—and he nearly destroyed the universe in the process. And apparently the only way he could get over you was to erase his memories. I think you had something to do with that, but I’m not sure; you being dead and all, I’m not sure how that would have worked. It took a while for his memories to become fully blocked—you must have made one hell of an impression on him, miss—so there were still some remnants that hung on for a long time. When he reunited with River, he still remembered your name and claimed to even have talked to you after you died—him being the Doctor, that wasn’t impossible to imagine—but he said he couldn’t be sure if it had all been a dream. He did find out how you died, though, but he refused to talk about it, too. By the time River was sent to meet her maker—you know her whole story, yeah?” Clara nodded. “—By the time that happened, it had been many years since he’d activated the memory block, and by then he couldn’t even remember your name anymore or anything about you, and River and I agreed to drop the subject.”

“So, if you don’t know how or when I died, then I could have easily died in my bed, an old woman, but this time having spent the rest of my life with the Doctor instead of wasting away in a dream,” Clara said, a hopeful tone in her voice. This time it was the Doctor and Nardole who gave her a questioning look. “Long story. On the other hand, I could trip over a brick an hour from now. OK, so I know I die. All that means is I won’t become an immortal like Ashildr. That’s fine by me, to be honest. As someone I admire once said, immortality is about everyone you love dying.” She looked at the Doctor as she intentionally misquoted him, and was disappointed when he didn’t make eye contact.

“Clara, I’m sorry you had to find this out,” the Doctor said before glaring at Nardole. “And I don’t think you should have heard it from a cyborg made from Poundland parts, either. Obviously, something went wrong with the TARDIS. She usually has safeties in place to prevent this sort of thing, so I don’t end up accidentally visiting, say, Rose Tyler before she met me. Intentionally, sure—I had reasons for doing so—but not accidentally. She shouldn’t have landed us here, and we probably shouldn’t stay very long before my younger self arrives.”

A buzzer sounded from a band strapped to Nardole’s wrist. “Our guest is summoning me. Probably wants me to change her bath water. Best not keep her waiting. Will you be OK, Doctor?”

The Doctor smiled. “Why wouldn’t I be OK? I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. Go see to M … er … our guest.”

As Nardole left, Clara asked, “No point asking who your guest is, I suppose.”

“What good would it do?”

Clara and the Doctor stared at each other for a moment, and then Clara took two steps forward and embraced the Doctor tightly. To her relief, the Doctor immediately wrapped his arms around her, even though at this moment she knew she was just a few pegs above stranger as far as he was concerned.

“Thank god you’re still a hugger,” Clara said.

“I take it I have you to thank for that.”

“It took a lot of work and a lot of grumpiness,” Clara chuckled as she moved out of the hug. “I honestly don’t know what to say, except that I’m angry at you.”

“Why?”

“For forgetting me. You do know I find that really offensive, right?”

“Clara, I don’t remember why I wiped my memory of you. But I am confident that I would not have done so without a damned good reason.”

Clara moved away from the Doctor, turning her back to him as she felt tears come. “So what now? I go back out into the cupboard, wait for the younger you to come along and somehow pretend this never happened? How can I go on living my life knowing that sometime in the future—tomorrow, next month, a decade from now—something is going to happen to me that will come close to destroying you? I know this is dangerous, what we do. It’s part of the deal and my eyes are wide open. But how can I stay with you—I don’t want to think about what losing me will do to you. This has to stop and one of us will have to go. Call me greedy, but I don’t want to forget you, and I don’t ever want you to forget me.” She turned to face the Doctor, a sad smile on her lips. “You daft old man.”

Clara’s mobile chose that moment to ring. She automatically took it out of her pocket to look at it and saw the image of a stick insect with a mop of grey hair photoshopped on its head indicating who was calling. “Oh, that’s great, just great. It’s you, of course. Probably calling to complain about not having a place to park because there’s another _bloody TARDIS in the way_.”

“Better answer it. Take a deep breath first.”

“You don’t say another word and you don’t talk to me about taking deep breaths.” She put the phone up to her ear, but still found herself following the Doctor’s suggestion before speaking, as brightly as she was able. “Hello? Oh, hi Doctor! … Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. ... No, that’s OK, I had to keep a couple of kids after class anyway. Nothing earth-shattering. Tell you what, head to my place instead, yeah? I’ll be along in about an hour; my motorbike’s in the shop so I’ll need to take the Tube, but the walk will do me good. Alright … see you then. Bye!”

“What am I up to?” the Doctor asked.

“You’re running a little late. Apparently, you found out about some leftover Adipose hanging about in 2009, so you had to go round them up. I used to think Adipose were cute, till I found out where they came from.”

The Doctor chuckled. “I remember that. Beware the smol bean.”

“What did you say? Doctor, that was _our thing_. You used to call me smol bean. You, me, Nina. Remember me in a polar bear costume handing out ice cream novelties on the South Bank? You recording some ridiculous advert voiceovers? Us posing for a wedding magazine cover?”

The Doctor scoffed at that last one. “Wedding? Exactly how well did we know each other, Clara?”

“If you’d asked, I wouldn’t have been able to say no,” Clara answered honestly. That made the Doctor stop in his tracks. “Doctor, if I’m dead and gone, and you don’t remember any of it, it doesn’t matter anyway, right? I could come out and say I’m in love with you and always have been, and it would make no never mind to you. I just wonder if you ever told me, ever will tell me, before …” Clara shrugged.

The Doctor looked down at the console. “They’re the most powerful words in any language. Which is why I never say them. I never even said them to River. Do you want to know why?”

Clara nodded.

“That bloody Rule No. 1 River made up. It’s true. ‘The Doctor lies.’ I lie all the time. I lie about my name. I lie about where I came from. I never left Gallifrey because I was bored. That was just another lie. I even lied for centuries about how many of me there were. My whole existence has been built on lies. But, when I give my hearts to somebody, I never want that to be a lie. So, even if I feel it through my entire being, I just can’t ever allow myself say it.”

“I know,” Clara said. 

“But, for me to have done what Nardole said I did … maybe I never said it, but I must have truly felt it.”

Clara smiled and approached the Doctor, gently taking his lapels and pulling him closer. She gave him a brief kiss on the lips. “You never really had to say anything … I knew … I _know_ ,” she whispered. “But now what, Doctor? I know too much about this. Too much about my future, our future.” She released him. “And I mean it—I won’t let you torture yourself because of me. But I don’t know if I can actually say goodbye. Guess this really is an addiction I have. I’m addicted to you.”

The Doctor, still a bit stunned from the kiss (and, admittedly, saddened that it didn’t trigger a clichéd flood of restored memories; that sort of thing was the preserve of fairy tales, sadly), took a moment to think. “By encountering me now, from a future point in your timeline, there’s a chance you could be subject to the same temporal realignment that I experience on the odd occasion when I encounter one of my future selves. You mentioned that you knew about Captain Grumpy, so you were with the three of me on Gallifrey, the last day of the Time War?”

“Grandpa, Sandshoes and the Chin. You could have had your own ITV comedy show.”

“But ‘Sandshoes’ and ‘Grandpa,’ as you call them, retained no memory of meeting ‘The Chin.’ Nor did Sarah Jane Smith when she met a future me—the one with the celery fetish—during a visit to Gallifrey’s Death Zone; in fact she lost all memory of that event. It’s all wobbly-wibbly, etc. etc.”

“Wibbly-wobbly,” Clara prompted.

“Don’t correct a person’s catchphrase. Rude. Anyway … that could happen. But we can’t leave it to chance. So, first, I’m going to give you a lift home.” 

Clara waited expectedly for the usual mad flourish as the Doctor flipped switches and entered co-ordinates. But he just stood there, staring blankly at the console.

“What’s wrong, Doctor.”

“Uh … what’s your address again?”

***

Clara recommended the Doctor not materialize the TARDIS inside her flat. For one thing, there was only one place in the living room set aside for TARDIS landings (after some previous unfortunate parking choices that included her bedroom—destroying her favourite end table—and her bathroom—which led to some uncomfortable conversations and the Doctor complaining about getting water in the TARDIS), and the space needed to be left free for the other Doctor to arrive. So they’d parked on the ground level outside, next to a shed containing lawn maintenance supplies.

“You know you could already be up there, waiting,” Clara said as she and the Doctor climbed the multiple flights of stairs to her flat as she silently cursed the fact (for the fourth time in so many days) that the lift was out of service. “Isn’t it a huge risk?”

“No more risky than having you retaining too much knowledge of your personal future and mine.”

“Care to explain the plan?”

“Let’s get to your floor first. I might be a physically superior Time Lord, but these stairs are still murder.”

***

To Clara’s relief, her flat was still earlier-TARDIS-free when they arrived. As she went to drop her bag of marking onto her bed, the Doctor took a look around the living room, making special note of TARDIS-shaped indentation on the carpet next to the sofa, and the collection of souvenirs Clara had collected from past travels that adorned a bookshelf, especially a photo of her kissing the Doctor on the cheek as fireworks went off in the background. He took it off the shelf and held it in his hands, tenderly, trying to remember.

“You took me to a planet where new year’s has been celebrated non-stop for two centuries,” Clara said as she returned to the living room. “I lost my sunglasses there, and most of my dignity, but I did come away with that great photo. I once spotted you looking at it, like you’re doing now, but smiling. Not … Doctor, are you’re crying?”

“No, I’ve got something in my eye.”

Clara hugged him from behind. “Doctor, that line was old when dinosaurs walked the earth. I know, because I was there.”

The Doctor put the photo back. “The more I re-learn about us … I don’t want to lose you again, Clara.”

“I know.” 

The Doctor took a deep breath, then turned around and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Clara, it’s going to happen very quickly, if this works.”

“If _what_ works? You’ve left me out of the loop.”

“Directed Blinovitch Limitation Effect. If there’s anything worse than two incarnations of the same Time Lord being in the same room, it’s two copies of the _same_ incarnation being together. I’ve experienced it a couple of times; Bow Tie Me had a knack for running into himself, but catastrophe was avoided because the first time happened in an alternate universe that was collapsing in on itself anyway and the second time happened within the TARDIS where meeting yourself is sometimes an operational hazard. Ironically, that was the time when I thought I was taking her to Darillium, to set in motion the events leading to her ... being archived in the CAL supercomputer. Which was how she was able to communicate with me ... with us ... later.”

“Yeah, about that. Do you mean that you prepared to go to your death on Trenzalore without resolving her timeline? I remember what you told me could have happened when I tried to force you to undo Danny’s death. The short version: Universe goes boom.”

“That one’s on River. Bow Tie Me wasn’t the most careful at times, and he let slip about the plan, so River used her amnesia lipstick on him, programming its nanosprites to erase all knowledge I had of having to deliver her to Darillium. When I saw her the last time, my memories of what I had to do returned. I always wondered why. But I think the memory block I used to forget you somehow overrode what River had done.”

“That must have been hard on you,” Clara said. “I’m sorry.”

“I remember thinking that I had to let River go, that trying to come up with some clever plan to prevent her death was wrong. I still cheated, a little. I promised her one more night on Darillium and the nights there are 24 years long. But now that I’ve met you again, and I’m learning more about us … I wonder if what happened with you taught me a lesson that I remembered through the memory block.”

“Well, I’m glad to have been of service. Even if I had to die to do it. So this Bingofish…”

“Blinovitch. Just say BLE.”

“So this BLE can be dangerous and you could blow a hole in the space-time continuum. There goes my damage deposit, I guess.”

“No, it won’t be that bad. The idea is for a limited BLE to be created by the other Doctor and myself being in close proximity and directed at you. You might get knocked out for a few moments, but when you come to, the last couple of hours should be a blank. I’ll leave my other Doctor a vague message explaining what’s up. This wouldn’t be my first rodeo. What’s so funny?”

“Guess who taught you that phrase.” Her laugh evaporated in the stillness of the flat. “Doctor, I don’t want to lose a single memory of you—not a minute. What happens if I refuse? This wouldn’t be my first rodeo, either. Why can’t I just keep it to myself?”

“Clara, we have no choice. You can’t know about your future. You don’t know how many lives you’ll save, how many planets you’ll save, how many universes, so long as you know nothing about what is going to happen to you, or to us, in the future.”

Clara was shaking her head. “Doctor, I can handle it. And all I really know is that someday in the future I’m going to die. We all die eventually. Very few of us know how or when. So I don’t have an unfair advantage. And you, well you get to live for-bloody-ever, don’t you? All it means is I won’t have to ever see you change again. Please, don’t make me do this.”

The Doctor took a breath and his knees nearly buckled. 

“Doctor? Are you OK?”

“Just … I just got hit with a massive bit of déjà vu there. Like we’ve had this conversation before.”

Clara shrugged. “Maybe we have. Maybe this isn’t the first time you’ve Donna Noble’d me.”

The Doctor’s eyes flashed. “Don’t you dare make a verb out of her. What I had to do saved her life and it haunts me every day.”

“Sorry, that was out of line. I apologize.”

“Don’t apologize, because you’re right. You’re always right,” the Doctor said.

“Excuse me?”

“I have no right to do this.” He pointed in the general direction of where his TARDIS was parked. “It wasn’t your fault she messed up, or because she decided to be funny and do it on purpose. Maybe she thinks I needed to see you again. I don’t want to take your memories, not one single moment. Not even for this. As you said, Nardole didn’t give you any useful information, right? You still don’t know if it will happen tomorrow or a year from now or fifty.”

Clara’s eyes filled with tears. “Thank you, Doctor.” She wrapped the Doctor in another hug. “But … but …” She inhaled and squeezed tighter before releasing him. “This time—just this time, you understand—you’re the one who’s right. I might be OK knowing about my future, but ... I’m with you now, so I know you’ll outlive me, and that knowledge can be just as bad, right? What if I get overconfident that you’ll win? Can you promise me that I won’t lose more than the last hour or so? Nothing more?”

The Doctor nodded. 

“Unless the TARDIS _really messes up_ and I arrive here with another one of you, the impact should be localised.”

“OK. So, what do we do now, just wait for the ‘ _vworp, vworp_ ’?”

“ _Vworp, vworp_?”

Clara shrugged with a smile. 

“I need to prepare you first,” he said. “To make sure the effect remains minor.”

Clara looked into the Doctor’s eyes. “Are you OK, Doctor?”

“Pardon?”

“I’m gone. River’s gone. You have Missy locked away for whatever reason—don’t look at me like that; you know I can read you like a book and I won’t tell anyone—and I guess you have Nardole, but you seem lonely.”

“I don’t know what I am anymore,” the Doctor replied, honestly.

“Find someone, Doctor. That’s all I ask. You shouldn’t be alone. I don’t know if this means anything to you with your memories of me gone but, Doctor … I let you go.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Doctor, we’ll be together again in just a few minutes. But I’m speaking for future-me now. Because I don’t know if I’ll get the chance later. Find someone.”

“Goodbye, Clara.”

“Goodbye, Doctor.”

The Doctor placed his hand on Clara’s forehead, but Clara moved it away and leaned up to kiss the Doctor first. They held the kiss for a moment before breaking off. Clara then nodded assent and the Doctor covered her forehead ahead with his hand; in an instant, she was deep asleep and he was supporting her weight.

Ever-so-gently, he laid her down on the couch. He placed the tips of his fingers against each side of her temple and quietly mouthed the words “dream now.”

A piece of paper on a side table began to flutter and the Doctor knew he had seconds before he had to be out of sight. He quickly made his way into the corridor outside the flat. The wheezing and groaning of the TARDIS announced its arrival (the Doctor could barely prevent a chuckle from escaping as he heard someone in an adjoining flat complain loudly about the plumbing rattling again).

The Doctor continued to listen at the door.

“Wake up, sleepy-head!” he heard himself call out.

Inside the flat, Clara jerked awake. “Courtney Woods, leave that Cyberman alone! Huh? Oh, I’m sorry, I must have shut down for a bit. Where were we? Oh, yeah, we were kissing, I think.”

“Kissing? Clara, I just got here and you were sound asleep. I almost didn’t have the hearts to wake you, but I figured your wrath at missing out on seeing the once-in-an-aeon conjunction of the ringed gas giants of Arcturus would be greater.”

“Hey, when did you get a haircut?” Clara still sounded a bit woozy. Out in the hall, the Doctor felt a pang of guilt at putting her into such a deep sleep. 

“Last week. You were there, Clara, in fact it was your request. You even made the appointment for the barber. Are you alright?” The distinctive buzz of the sonic sunglasses. “Nothing unusual, other than you might have a cold coming on and you seem to still be in a bit of residual rem sleep. That must have been quite the dream.” A brief pause before the earlier Doctor resumed, sounding a little as if he’d just had the wind squeezed out of him. “Clara … if you keep that up I’m going to have to start wearing padding around the ribs.” 

“You were there, but you had a new companion and … the TARDIS took you to Coal Hill by accident. I got so frustrated with you because you couldn’t remember me. You’d erased your memories of us, of our time together.”

“Now why would I do a thing like that, Clara?”

“You’ve done it before. Donna Noble.”

“What I had to do saved her life and it haunts me every day.”

At this, the Doctor out in the corridor sucked in a breath, worried that Clara might remember that he’d said the exact same words in her ‘dream.’ If she noticed, she said nothing. This was a relief.

Clara had given the Doctor permission to take her memories, this is true, but, just because the TARDIS messed up (again), there was no reason for him to delete everything from the last couple of hours. Instead, he’d performed a delicate edit, excising only the foreknowledge of her death, Nardole and River, and adding in the bare details of a brief, mundane Tube trip home; he knew from his other companions who had experienced the pudding brain ritual known as commuting that the odds were good she’d barely have remembered such a trip anyway. As for the other memories … he let her keep them as a vivid dream. Dreams become part of who you are, even if you don’t remember them in detail. Let her experiences over the last couple of hours become part of her, but as a dream. No worries about her accidentally impacting her timeline, or his; no chance of the crushing guilt she’d feel if that ever happened. Again, he knew from experience.

“It felt so real, so sad,” he heard Clara say to his earlier self. “I could even smell your aftershave when we …”

“Clara, I don’t know if I want to have this conversation now.”

“We only kissed, Doctor. We have kissed before, you know. And it was just a dream.”

“I know, but … dreams are private. I feel bad enough to have intruded on you and Danny's dream that Christmas.”

“Whether that was really Danny, or just my own subconscious, I came away with the feeling that it was OK to let go, to move on.”

“With me?”

“No one better,” Clara said.

“That can’t be true.”

“It is true, and I’m glad you were there with me. Anyway, I’m awake now. Plenty of time to sleep when I’m dead, so where are you taking me?”

The Doctor outside listened as the Doctor inside began espousing the virtues of the ringed gas giants of Arcturus, his voice fading away as the door to the TARDIS slapped shut.

The Doctor opened the door and looked inside in time to see the TARDIS dematerialize. 

“Goodbye, Clara,” he said. “Be magnificent.”

***

By the time the Doctor had returned to the TARDIS, he’d forgotten why he materialized the ship near a nondescript housing estate in London in (he stuck his tongue out to check the pollution level in the atmosphere) the mid-2010s. He remembered thinking, “I thought this might happen,” and that was all.

The Doctor had sensed this sort of memory hole before. When he was in his fifth life and met his tenth incarnation, for example, he had a blank that remained until centuries later his tenth self closed the loop. Several times in his first, second and third lives this had happened. Even Captain Grumpy had to live with a memory hole that was so huge, it left him with the impression he'd destroyed Gallifrey, colouring his next three lives. The Doctor knew instinctively that he’d for some reason encountered another version of himself—not just another version this time, but his same self. He gave the sky a quick scan and satisfied himself that, whatever happened, the universe was still around, so it must have been fixed. Some things you just have to get used to when you’re a time traveller. He just hoped that, whatever happened, he’d had fun.

Back inside the TARDIS, he called out for Nardole. Nardole, who had been observing/spying on the proceedings in the flat using the time-space visualizer, wiped away a couple of tears before putting on an artificial smile and turning to face the Doctor.

“So, Doctor, how did it go?”

“How did what go?” the Doctor said, knowing full well that Nardole knew.

“Do you really want to know?” his valet said.

“I don’t know, you tell me.”

Nardole thought for a moment. Of the details he knew about Clara and the Doctor; of the details he knew, but didn’t let on that he knew. “The tl;dr is everything worked out and nobody died today. Let’s just move on,” he said. 

The Doctor accepted that. He didn’t completely trust Nardole yet, but he knew the man wouldn’t have leave any life-threatening threads dangling. Who would be left to pay him if the universe imploded? As he took his place at the console, the Doctor spotted something draped over a handrail. “What’s that?”

Nardole followed his gaze as the Doctor quickly scooped up a red-wool beanie cap. 

“That would be mine, sir,” Nardole said as he took it from the Doctor and awkwardly jammed it onto his head.

“Doesn’t look like your style,” the Doctor said. 

Nardole shrugged. “My Auntie Clara made it for me.” He watched to see if the Doctor would react. 

“Good thing she didn’t knit you a pair of socks,” the Doctor said instead.

“Ha. Ha. Very funny.” 

“So, where to?” the Doctor asked.

“Missy is getting restless. We need to establish a secure place to keep her. No more gallivanting around for a while. So, while you were off doing ... whatever it was you were doing ... I found a possible candidate.”

“Where?”

“There’s a university in some Earth city called Bristeluck that looks promising. Circa 1947.”

The Doctor frowned. “ _Bristeluck?_ Do you mean Bristol, U.K.?”

“Yeah, there.”

The Doctor shrugged and began to set the co-ordinates. Bristol wasn’t a bad place to settle down for a while, he thought. Who knows who he might meet there?

**Author's Note:**

> Concordance time:
> 
> This story includes yet another attempt by me at rationalizing the events of the minisode "Last Night" and "The Husbands of River Song." I also attempt to fill in a few plot holes related to the "The Return of Doctor Mysterio" and "Extremis" with regards to Missy, while also connecting to "The Pilot" (one Series 10 episode implied that the Doctor and Nardole had been at Bristol University for as long as 7 decades before the events of The Pilot). Another plot hole I try to fill here is why Sarah Jane Smith didn't remember the events of The Five Doctors in "School Reunion."
> 
> The hat I describe Clara wearing is inspired by a style of hat Jenna Coleman is often seen wearing.
> 
> Evie Hubbard's selfie was taken in "The Woman Who Lived."
> 
> Dodo Chaplet, a companion of the First Doctor, found her way accidentally into his TARDIS way back at the end of "The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve." 
> 
> The zapping of the Doctor's memory by the telepathic circuits is a mishap that occurred "The History of the Doctor," a minisode that served as a bookend for the 2013 50th anniversary retrospective The Ultimate Guide.
> 
> The bit about Victoria writing code into her diary is something I came up with for this story, but reading between the lines has become something of a sport for those who enjoy reading the queen's innermost thoughts.
> 
> The bit about companions getting up each other's nose is a little bit of exaggeration - there are many stories in which they get along quite well - but as the Rose/Sarah Jane meet-up in "School Reunion" showed us, it doesn't always go smoothly. As for the snogging ... that's a nod to the many fan fic writers who have paired up various companions over the years.
> 
> Charlotte "Charley" Pollard was a companion of the Eighth Doctor in the Big Finish audio dramas. A few years after her run with Eight ended, she was brought back - as a companion of the Sixth Doctor. Wibbly-wobbly...
> 
> I blame Billy Connolly who - like Peter Capaldi - hailed from Glasgow, for introducing me to the word "bampot."
> 
> The references to "smol and mighty" and Clara's references to the bear costume, adverts and the wedding magazine are callbacks to my own series of stories called "Smol Bean".
> 
> The two occasions where the Doctor met his current incarnation refer to the Eleventh Doctor episode "The Big Bang" and the minisode "Last Night".


End file.
